so she turned to the book of a more exotic people.

Can America ever forgive her for reaching beyond yoga & rehab

into the terrain of the enemy? I mean, Jane Fonda is still

paying the price for looking eastward.

I like my life dry, like the lips an aesthetician told me she could fix,

use sugar-based fillers to fill in lines from smoking,

fill up the rosy skin browning with middle age.

Sure, the corners are downturned, someone needs to walk

around looking angry & I’m angry that the plump face of youth

is now the face I’m expected to buy back, just as my cheekbones

are emerging. FFS, Lindsey’s now allowed her lips to deflate.

After thinking all this through, I see The Archdruid Report

proclaim we are at peak meaninglessness.

Majda Gama is a Saudi-American poet based Washington, DC where she has roots as a Punk DJ and an activist. She has read her poetry at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature and Split This Rock 2018. Majda is a Best of the Net nominee. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Fairy Tale Review, The Normal School, Slice, and The South Dakota Review. Majda is a poetry editor for Tinderbox.